Eldar info From Gav Thorpe

[Nabterayl]

Wait what settles the debate? Just Thorpe's idea that there are only millions of craftworlders?

[Bigred]

Yes, at least until there is another author assigned to the Eldar from Black Library.

At this point I always consider canon from BL to be "higher grade" than the studio's fluff scribbling *cough*carved his name into Mortarion's heart*cough*

[Nabterayl]

Where do you get an overall figure though? Even if Thorpe thinks craftworlders number X, and dark eldar number Y, where do you get an eldar population figure such that you can derive any relationship between X and Y?

[CouchViking]

Kinda feel bad for Thorpe having to back pedal like this. He is a story teller, telling a character driven story. I don't think he should have to explain the logistics to fill in fluff for a more "complete experience" to please the reader. Although if he volunteering the information then I gotta say he should check his facts behind previous cannon.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

The problem with it isn't the idea that the eldar are few, that is undeniable, but what few means in the context of 40k. A craftworld having a population in the low millions (an average city size on earth) would put the total Craftworlder population somewhere between that of the USA and India today on earth. That is high by our standards. But in the context of a galaxy with a million worlds and single hive worlds with a population of 150billion a craftworld with a population in the low millions is ridiculously, implausibly low.

Dunno, still think Thorpe's approach of "they're inhumanly well-organized" covers it. That 150billion Hive will produce millions of Navy-slaves (while Eldar have nigh-autonomous starships) and millions of guardsmen, many of which will be wasted (we've seen droves of guardsmen die because their landers fell through thin ice/stone, jungle-fighters mis-assigned to an iceworld, those who the administratum forgot etc). By "continent-sized", I think he meant only the living-space - the entire vessel is still moonsized, but only a continent-sized part of it's maintained to city/forest standards.

I'm not up on my eldar fluff; what do we know of their reproduction cycle?

Xenology had some notes from a Xeno-researcher, the Imperial theory based on dissection (possibly inaccurate, of course) is that it's a lengthy process, requiring the ovum-equivalent to be fertilized multiple specific times over a prolonged period. It's mentioned in the Deldar 'dex that having a "natural" child is a luxury few can afford, and most of 'em are the results of cloning.

I was meaning the Imperial Navy, sorry - that the crews of the Imperial vessels alone would be enough to kill everyone on a craftworld.

Well, yeah, but they'd need to catch the Eldar with their pants down for that to happen. And Eldar have psychic-prophecy-pants :P

Well that kind of settles the debate, the "real Eldar race" in terms of population is almost certainly the Dark Eldar.

Yeah, plus, a fair few Craftworlders bleed off and join Exodite, Harlequin, Corsair and Dark Eldar factions, particularly younger Eldar. That probably slows growth.

[Nabterayl]

Does the dark eldar codex give some indication of how many dark eldar there are? Is that the piece I'm missing here?

[Anggul]

Yes, at least until there is another author assigned to the Eldar from Black Library.

At this point I always consider canon from BL to be "higher grade" than the studio's fluff scribbling *cough*carved his name into Mortarion's heart*cough*

Ward doesn't count.

I only put anything above codex when Ward is involved. At all other times, non-BL takes precedence for me.


Also, given the other fluff discrepancies, I can't really think of Path as being canon. In Outcast, for example, they seemed to be able to slip in and out of the webway whenever they felt like it, rather than having to find gates. The reach of the Eldar is generally confined to certain areas because those areas are where Webway gates are. They can't just slip in and out anywhere that's in line with a webway tunnel. They also didn't seem to care in the slightest that Aradryan spoke regularly with a Solitaire. It's meant to have a horrific effect on one's fate to even be in the company of one, and to speak to one is said to invite such misfortune that one ought as well commit suicide as soon as possible rather than suffer the horrible fate that awaits them. This just seemed to be completely missed out, with no-one so much as batting an eyelid. Little things, but things which could be easily learned by taking a little time to read the codices.

It really isn't hard to learn all of the fluff you need to know before writing something. All you have to do is read the codices, rulebook, things like that, heck you can often just read the Lexicanum articles and get almost everything you need to know about something in 40k. For some reason though, Black Library writers usually seem to be devoid of this easy and simple research.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the books and Gav writes beautifully. I could actually feel my mood and thoughts fluctuating right along with Aradryan's, I could feel and vaguely understand everything he was going through, and it was brilliantly done in pretty much every way. I just think some little changes could complete the experience and fill in any gaps. Overall though, really great.


As I said before though, his take on the Craftworlds is just that, his take. Considering the length of time they've been in the fluff, there is precious little ever written about them. The codices and rulebooks etc. usually just give a description of what they are, rather than actually going into any detail at all about size, population etc.

[Archon Charybdis]

It's obviously an issue of Sci-fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale, but it's kind of irksome because with even a passing consideration it should be apparent how silly of a number that is, especially in light of the attrition rate we see just in the course of the story--it's not as though the Eldar are depicted as so superior as to not still take considerable casualties in combat.

If you average the populations given for the Hive Worlds on Lexicanum's page [url]http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Hive_world[/url], you get an average hive world population of 166 BILLION. That's per planet. And a total of 32,380 Hive Worlds in the Imperium. That puts the human population of the galaxy somewhere over 5.38e15 That's over 5 quintillion.

It would be an absolutely gobsmacking, inhuman, nigh miraculous feat for the Eldar to be a potent galactic military force with a population in the tens of billions per Craftworld--a few million is just absolutely carve-your-name-on-Mortarion's-heart stupid.

[Nabterayl]

It would be an absolutely gobsmacking, inhuman, nigh miraculous feat for the Eldar to be a potent galactic military force with a population in the tens of billions per Craftworld

Obvious question time: ARE they a potent galactic military force? When was the last time the eldar conquered a planet that was held by opposing forces of even a few million?

I've always thought that eldar are kind of like space marines, in that as long as they can identify a fulcrum that can be turned by commando action (and 40K storytelling presupposes that the galaxy is rife with such fulcrums) they can have an outsized impact on events. But the moment you tell them to conduct an actual war, they pack up and go home - unless they already are home, in which case we get to see how commandos on the defensive and against the wall can make their individual superiority felt, albeit at great cost.

Can anybody cite examples of eldar overcoming large numbers of enemy troops in direct conflict?

[Archon Charybdis]

I suppose "effective" military force might be more apt. That is to say they frequently achieve their military aims--which are admittedly more narrow in scope than the Imperium's-- through superior tactics (Divination, *****es) mobility, and firepower. They do function much more like Space Marines than IG in that sense. That said, as Anggul pointed out, the only canon instance we have a Craftworld coming under attack by Imperial forces resulted in the destruction of an entire sector fleet (can't recall if this was in the BFG books or one of the main rulebooks). I would call that military potency.